Marina Gask

Marina Gask is a communications expert. A journalist, copywriter, blog coach and press consultant, she advises business owners on press USP and strategy. A former magazine editor who headed up More!, Top Sante and Sugar Magazine and was launch editor of John Lewis Edition, Marina's an expert at helping entrepreneurs think like an editor so they find their press niche. For your communications - blogs, newsletters, web content etc - she has a flair for finding the right written 'voice' to connect with your customers. A consultant editor for Hearst Empowering Women, Marina continues to write features for glossies, dailies and a variety of digital sites. Go to www.marinagask.com

I went off on maternity leave a mess of insecurities. The interim editor was a brilliant journalist, and at the time unencumbered with inconvenient children - as I was about to be. What if she turned out to be better than me, or more popular? What if the circulation figures went up - what if they gave her my job?

I recently saw a social media challenge to explain your profession as badly as possible, with the idea that people have to guess what you do just from reading the description. So a personal trainer's description would be "I make 'eat less, move more' really complicated." And a DJ would be 'I manipulate sound waves so that people twitch and ingest ethanol'. Descriptions that make your profession a bit tougher to fathom. And it occurred to me that this is a game I've played before. Only it wasn't a game.

An American firm has come up with a wristband that jolts people into giving up bad habits. You just pick the behaviour you wish to prevent and choose the punishment - the wristband does the rest. Buzzes in your ear, demands a financial forfeit or even gives you a mild electric shock.

Depressingly - yet perhaps inevitably - recent research by the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) found that half of women believe that having a baby poses such a risk to their career that they would consider remaining childless.

If you work 24.7 and never switch off your mobile, or you're a busy exec who's always on call or in a different time zone, and you're unfit and overweight, you're a prime candidate for stress-related heart issues as your arteries are likely to be clogged.

Talking to a friend at a networking event the other day, I asked what drove her to pay the hefty fee required to join the business group she belongs to. Referrals? Connections? Adding a few business cards to an already teetering pile? None of these.

Caroline is passionate about empowering women to make themselves vital to their employers and their industry, so they don't end up getting sidelined on returning to work. "I help women look at how they can build their career and prove their worth long before they get pregnant so that any employer would give their right arm to keep them, even on a flexible basis.

Why can't excellent women progress in their careers in proportion to their talent? Every day, it seems, a new factor is blamed. We're too apologetic and indecisive. Or self-deprecating and cute. We lack confidence in the company of alpha males. We can't crack the 'boys club' mentality in the boardroom. Some of us over-compensate and play it super-tough or 'bossy'. What's best?